Although so-called “reality” programs and “webcams” have captured an increasing amount of popular interest, these offer little opportunity for direct interaction with the audience. Indeed, while attempts to facilitate audience participation in television programming have a long history, such efforts have typically been based on illusion. Thus, even programming that involves some degree of audience participation is not truly collaborative—that is, the action the audience sees cannot currently be determined, in real time, by the collective preferences of the audience.
Efforts to involve the audience to a greater degree have included so-called “tele-operation” and “tele-robotics” systems, in which the members of the audience compete for control of the actor in the remote environment. These systems generally permit only a single member of the audience at a time to issue commands to the actor. Once the command is completed, the issuer of the command voluntarily or involuntarily gives up control and the members of the audience compete for the chance to issue the next command to the actor.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a system that supports collaborative control of the actor by multiple members of the audience.